Stop playing Russian roulette

People are getting bored and feeling cooped up so they are starting to take more risks.

Rumours of hairdressers secretly having clients, people flagrantly ignoring requests from grocery stores to limit the amount of family members coming in together or not following the arrows put in the aisles to aid in social distancing.

The number of cases keeps growing even if the number of deaths is low but it’s shocking how many people are pretending life is normal right now.

Take a look down any store-lined street in Athabasca, Barrhead or Westlock and you will see too many vehicles.

For the very few numbers of businesses that are open or are doing curb side pick-up, there are far too many vehicles.

If you want something to think about, look at countries that are experiencing a second wave of the virus, like China, Singapore and Taiwan. It will happen here too if we lift restrictions too soon.

How many ways does it have to be said that while COVID-19 won’t kill everyone, but it may kill you, or someone you love?

It’s frankly appalling the number of people who think this a hoax or something to ignore “because I’m careful.”

Are you though? Are your hands raw from washing them? Do you wear a mask and gloves when you go out?

Are you “just popping over to see Mary and Bill because they’ve been self-isolating too” but you stop and buy a bottle of wine that was touched by someone with asymptomatic COVID-19 yesterday and now you, Mary and Bill are all infected?

Yes, maybe you are being safe, but you don’t know with 100 per cent certainty that everyone else is.

This is not the time to be thinking it’s safe because no one, not even Alberta Health Services, knows how many cases there are. It has become a badge of shame, so we don’t know how many people with symptoms are hunkering down and not telling anyone.

Yes, this is a different response than what happened with SARS and H1N1, because we learned from those scenarios. It’s not to take away your rights, it’s to protect your and my right to live.

We are all in this together, everyone's jobs have affected and everyone has to follow the rules. No one is better than anyone else so stop placing others' lives at risk because you’re getting cabin fever.

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